I’ve watched at least 10 gain staging in logic videos before this and this is BY FAR the most useful video of them all. Thank you brother 🔥🤙 I also appreciate the heads up to gain stage my buses and out as well
Thanks Casey, and no worries at all. And yes, busses and outs as well. Just makes things much easier to manage level-wise. On my end I set each track fader to the level it needs to be at, my busses always stay at 0dB and everything combined at my master bus leaves me about 6dB of headroom. Works every time =)
How in the world..this has got to be hands down the best explanation of GAIN STAGING I have ever stumbled upon on RU-vid. For a 4-year video post, it's like finding treasures of gold. Thank you so much for breaking it down so simple.
Lol thanks my friend!! And no worries at all. Much of all this stuff is far less complicated than others might make it out to be, so I’m glad the video was helpful for you 🙂
Dude i love your channel!! This is great quality stuff, you kidding me dude? Man once you have enough view data for youtube to take and recomend your stuff to people you will grow quick! Your content is perfect for anyone interested in any type of audio. I dont make music but am a hobbyist filmmaker and painter. And your videos are veey useful for when i will have to learn to do all of this to score my short films. Can't wait to bounce some ideas off of you in the future! Don't sell yourself short, your content has more than just one use and muktiple demographics of people that would find this very useful!
the day I learned how to gain stage was probably the best day (music day) of my life. it makes mixing so much easier and brings out the full potential of plugins and Bus compression specifically.
Thank you so much! I was so confused with many long full mix videos or gain staging explained viedos. Your explanation was really simple but hit the spot!
i dont mean to be offtopic but does someone know a method to get back into an Instagram account..? I somehow lost my login password. I would appreciate any tricks you can offer me.
@Brooks Charlie i really appreciate your reply. I got to the site on google and im in the hacking process atm. I see it takes a while so I will reply here later with my results.
No worries at all John!! Gain staging is pretty simple really. I don’t know how it ever became such an “overly complicated” topic when it’s not at all 🙂
Wow, I've been doing this wrong for years. I knew I could tame hot tracks with Gain plug-in, but didn't have the confidence to fix things this way. Thanks!
No worries at all and glad the video helped you out. A lot of recording and mixing isn't that difficult. Don't get me wrong, it can take years to learn to do it well, but many areas of it aren't as hard or overwhelming as they may seem.
Thanks! Gain staging really is pretty simple and straightforward. I'm not sure how it's become such an "overthought to death" subject over the years. I think the whole -18dBFS thing and many not understanding the difference between peak and RMS levels is the issue.
Now I want a salad lol. Thanks btw. Yea it's a fine line between being heavy with terminology and also explaining things in a way that most anyone could understand.
Hi, Jeff! Outstanding video! Now, I feel more confident on how to use a compressor, saturator, or some heavy distortion plugins! I am an EDM DJ and songwriter, and I love your musical content as well. Let me try to recap from your video. 1. Don't clip on your channels, stereo bus, and the master channel at all times. No question about that. 2. Gain stage to a healthy signal of a sound right between -18 dB peak (minimum) and -6 dB peak (maximum). There are some questions though. Since the kick and the bass are supposed to be the loudest tracks for mixing, can they be turned down at -10 dB peak? 3. If I would use a and EQ, compressor, saturator, or some big distortion plugs, I would have to turn down the output as I drive the parameters to the same level as the gain staged instrument tracks. 4. Always leave headroom on the master fader for all times. Leave the fader on the master at 0 at all times. But does it necessarily has to be -6dB headroom? 5. If the mix bus and master fader was crossing above 0 dB, add a gain plugin and gain stage them on both of them. 7. Do not change the first gain on these channels. Instead, try to add an linear phase EQ and compressor. If I managed to do all these, with headroom, I'm pretty to go. But, when I am ready to send it out as a demo to a record label, does it need to be limited to be sent to the label for mastering? Thanks for the help!!! Ivan
Hey John, glad you liked the video, and thanks for subbing. Yea level matching and gain staging is pretty straightforward but also super important to ones work flow. It’s not the complicated daunting task some might think it is. Glad the video was useful for you. Take care of yourself in these crazy times good sir 🙂
Hey man, can you do a 101 video series on what you would recomend for someone who wants to get into music making? (film scoring in my case) I want to get to the point where i can make something that AT LEAST sounds up to "industry standard" and explain how to do so in steps. I don't mind spending the time to learn things, but you seem very knowledgable and could save me (and others) time but breaking the "barrier of entry" and de-mystify tbings and maybe talk about how certain companies try to upsell you with stuff you don't really need to know or buy
Thanks Glyn!! Yea, gain staging is dead simple. It's one of those areas where I think too many people overthink the life out of it. Could be said about most areas of recording lol
That’s about the long and short of it yes. It doesn’t have to be 100% the same volume so I wouldn’t stress or overthink it. But as long as the volume is pretty much the same then you’re good to go.
@@EverythingMusicRecording Im just trying to wrap my head around mixing. Lots of videos and out there but this one caught my attention. So if i understood you correctly, all faders should be at zero and the output volume from each track without plugins around -12db before starting? So every track is even steven?
No worries at all. I'm going to reply to both of your comments here. You are always gain staging. There is no difference between gain staging when you're tracking or mixing. You're just gain staging different things. When you're tracking you are gain staging to make sure that you are clipping the converters in your interface on the way in to your DAW. As you add plugins you want to make sure that the volume doesn't change when adding or removing plugins. There are 2 reasons for this. First being that you don't want the output of one plugin to be clipping the input of the second plugin, so we are still gain staging here. The second is that we can be tricked into thinking something sounds "better" because it is louder. That's why we want to level match, or gain stage our plugins. As we add more tracks to a song we still have to gain stage because the combined level of each track will eventually start to clip our busses and/or master bus. Think of a single brink. One brick is nothing, but if you stack enough on top of each other you'll eventually have the Empire State Building. So we gain stage each individual track, which are going to be send to busses, or group tracks (same thing) so all of our guitars go to a guitar buss, drums to a drum buss, so on and so forth. Each buss still needs to be gain staged as well. Think of the brick thing I mentioned. One guitar track might be fine, but now say 10 guitar tracks all feeding a buss, that buss might now be clipping right off the bat. So now you either need to turn down each guitar track, or you could add a gain plugin as the first plugin on that buss. All of our busses will also be feeding the master buss. So same issue. Each buss could be fine on its own, but combined we could be overloading and clipping our master buss. So we either turn down all the busses, or again we could add a gain plugin on our master buss, turn that down, and we'd be ok. So we are always gain staging. Its a balancing act and you're always juggling. There isn't really a right or wrong way to go about it either. I had mentioned turning down tracks or adding a gain plugin. Both work just fine. Just depends on the situation you're in. With time and experience you'll figure out what works best for you. You asked if all faders should be at zero. No, not really. As you add tracks you're going to be adjusting levels of other tracks so you really can't keep everything at zero. As with gain staging, you're also always in a stage of rough mixing. If I have drums tracked and now have to record guitars, I have to be able to hear the guitars in relation to the drums. If the drums are too loud or quiet than it would be very difficult to record the guitar tracks. I hope this helped. Its difficult to answer some of these things over a text reply. Let me know if i missed anything and I'll take another stab at it.
@@EverythingMusicRecording No, i think i understand its all about balance. I have noticed that plugins usually raises the loudness thats why i dont like them. Because they take away the natural aspect. One question, im a bit confused about plugins. My plan is to edit in logic and then transport everything to garageband for mixing because i want to start slow. I have made som midi strings, they have the studio violins stock logic plugin. When i load them to the inspector they come with some plugins like compression and phat etc. Are these essential to the sound or can i bypass them when exporting to garageband and start mixing the violins from scratch? Thanks, its alot of juggling.
omg i think i get it, so i was under the impression that every track needed to have a gain plug-in with -12 to -18db but in reality, it’s just a matter of making sure the prefader volume sits between -18 and -6dB in general on each track? regardless if it needs a gain plugin or not?
Hey Meh. You’ve got the gist of it. -18 to -6 is pushing it though. Try to keep things under about -12ish. On a distorted guitar then this is simple as the signal is already going to be very compressed. But a vocalist or drummer depending on their technic might go from quiet to loud in an instant, which, if you don’t leave enough headroom then you might clip your converters on the way in and now that take is ruined. So when tracking (I’ll use a singer for this example) have them sing the section they will sing the loudest and set your levels for that (sitting around -12ish). Now when you go to record that section if they sing a little quieter or a little louder it shouldn’t affect the recording (unless they suddenly sing 2-3 times as loud) I hope that makes sense. And if you’re doing that for each track then you don’t need to add a gain plugin to all the tracks because you already tracked at a good level in the first place. And for virtual instruments, many of them have their default output levels set to “our amps go to 11… that’s one louder…” but they will all have an output level. So just dial that back to be sitting around -12ish and you’ll be good to go on that front. Hope that all made sense but it sounds like you’ve pretty well got the idea of it all.
That’s awesome Meh!! My aim has always been to explain these things in a way that’s as easy for anyone to grasp and understand as possible, so it’s always nice to know when I’m hitting the mark! If you ever have any other questions, always feel free to ask away 🙂
Hey Shane. That’s actually a pretty loaded question so I’ll give you the long and short of it. A VU meter measures in volume units and responds to audio much slower. Usually around 300ms. But the needle moves in a way similar to the way we hear sound. So for getting a general level reading of a given source, VU meters are great. The meters in Logic (on the channel strip) are dBFS, digital full scale, and are super fast. They also read up to 0 dBFS which is our absolute ceiling. Anything above that and we get digital clipping which is bad. Whereas on a VU meter, 0 actually equates to -18dBFS (unless calibrated otherwise) I’ll have to do a video on this as we can really go down a rabbit hole pretty fast here. Think of a VU meter as showing levels over time, as our heads hear things. DBFS meters show audio in pretty much real time (this is why digital meters look like they are jumping all over the place, whereas VU meters seem slow and smooth) I hope that helped for now.... I’ll do a video lol because there are other meters in Logic as well.
@@EverythingMusicRecording, so i noticed in logic pro x the peak meter is roughy -12dbfs, 0 on a vu meter. so when i put a plugin like a 1176 , i now noticed the vu meter in the plug in also sits at 0...so does that mean it is getting the right signal? 2nd question I track guitars and pan left the other pan right and then bus them to a aux where i put all the plugins saves on dsp , i am on a universal audio platform. so will i apply the same technique on the bus ? i noticed my levels are a lot higher on the aux ( left and right) so i put a gain plug in to bring down the level? or would you bring down the gain in the individual tracks that go to that bus/Aux track? Thank you !!!!! this video made a huge difference on how i track and mix now...
@@shaner36 It sounds like your signals are correct, if i'm reading that first part correctly. Most plugins are calibrated to -18dBFS, which equals a reading of zero on a VU meter. This calibration uses a sine wave at 1000Hz, or 1Khz. So if you create a new track in logic, open up the Test Oscillator. It will default to a 1000hz sine wave but the level will be -12 on the right of the plugin. Set that level to -18. Underneath that, open a VU meter plugin and you will see the meter sitting right on 0. You will also notice on the mixer, that track level will also be siting right at -18. Now instruments will be all over the place because they aren't generating a single frequency at a consistent amplitude. But if your setup is showing -12dbsf, you might be calibrated to that. Waves plugins for instance, if you have the option to change the calibration to something other than -18dbfs, its usually the little screw graphic in the center bottom of the VU meter. Their VU meter plugin its a drop down near the top left. But thats they gist of it. Let me know if that answered your question . On to your guitar question. First part, I do the same thing. I group everything into busses. I use the busses for global FX. So if you want, as an example, all your guitars to have a HP at, iono, call it 100hz, then i would generally do that on the guitar buss. Or final light compression. I use the individual tracks for FX specific to just that track. So what you're doing is pretty standard stuff. As for the busses getting louder, thats normal. The more tracks you send to a buss, the louder that buss will get. Each track you add is adding to the levels being fed into that buss. How you adjust for that though would depend. If the buss isn't clipping, then a simple gain plugin on the first slot works just fine. If you are clipping the buss then I would turn down the tracks that are feeding into that buss at the track level before they hit the buss. Let me know if i answered everything for you Shane. And I'm glad the video made such a difference for you!! I'm working on a new video for next week that will really make you, and anyone else who watches it rethink how you track and record. Its gonna be a good one I hope =)
@@EverythingMusicRecordingThank you so much!! just did the sine wave made sure my tbpro vu meter was at 0 .. and now now its calibrated. Ok taking it to the next level..set up a send to an aux track for reverb. unity gain on send and using the fader on the aux track to blend in the amount of Reverb.. would you do it any other way..seen some videos where the send is more than unity gain ? again thank you so much
@@shaner36 Awesome sauce!! Glad the sine wave worked out and you're all calibrated. As for the reverb send and controlling the level, you can adjust the send level, the fader on the Aux channel, or the output of the reverb plugin. All will do about the same thing. I generally leave the Aux fader at 0 most of the time and adjust how much I'm sending to it.
Hello, so just to clarify: I record everything first with no plugins first, gain stage it, and then add the plugins and make sure that the volume doesn’t change? Or do i add all the plugins on recording, and then gain stage?
Hey Byron. You have part of it. Let me give you a quick recap. Gain staging always starts at your interface. You never want to clip your converters. Aim for peaks around -10db give or take. This will mean you have good levels going into your DAW without worry of any clipping on the way in. Those same levels going in should be pretty much the same levels you see on that instruments channel in your DAW. That is pretty much it… except now onto plugins. Many plugins by default (including many presets) have the output level cranked up. Why, I don’t know. So you can record with plugins on, but say the only plugin you have on is an amp sim, your guitar should pretty much be the same volume with or without the plugin on. If the guitar is way louder with the plugin on, you just need to adjust the output level of the amp sim. This goes for any plugin. The reason is that if say the amp sim output is super hot, if you add another plugin after the amp sim, you might already be overloading that next plugin in the change. (That all depends on how each plugin is coded, but that’s a whole other can of worms) And that’s the long and short of it. Let me know if that helped clear things up.
Appreciate this input, many thanks. But I still get confused about all the professional videos here on youtube telling me different things. It is the -12dBu RMS versus -18dBu RMS question I do not understand. If -18dBu RMS, which is in the analog world 0dB - the so called sweet-spot, why do I learn here that it is -12dBu RMS with peak at -6dBu? Many other videos say that the best range lies between -10dBFS and -18dBFS. In other words: -12dB probably results in too hot signals. It would be fantastic if someone could help me with this questions.
No worries at all. So the thing with gain staging is not to overthink it which many people seem to do. Each instrument is different and needs to be treated as such. A bass guitar is very dynamic, doesn’t have much of a transient and lots of sustain. A snare drum will have a massive transient and little to no sustain. If we watched the bass on a VU meter you’ll see the needle moving along with the bassline and you can see it’s average (RMS) level. If you do this with a snare drum you might see that light on the meter turning red because you’re clipping even though the needle movement doesn’t reflect this. The needle in a VU meter can’t keep up with the speed of the transient on a drum hit. So it’s much easier just to worry about the peak level on each track. Keep each instruments peak level somewhere between -10 and -14ish and that’s all you really need to do. If you had a bass guitar track peaking around -12 then it’s RMS is gonna be around the -18 RMS mark give or take a little anyway. So there is no real need to worry about it. So just keep each instruments peak level between -10 and -14 give or take and the rest will take care of itself. Let me know if that helped clear things up for you.
